The new age of customer profiling

Customer profiling has always been integral to commercial success.

But, significant technological advances have offered up a wealth of new data, and intelligent algorithms have been developed that can automatically aggregate and present this marketing data for you to use practically.

Read on to find out what’s changed with customer profiling and how you can turn this data into a more personalised, accurate marketing strategy.

Customer profiling through the ages

Customer profiling was once limited to a few disparate information sources that could only provide a limited customer profile, even after hours spent manually drawing conclusions.

Customer profiling has been broadly restricted to:

Buyer behaviour

By recording the details of previous purchases using loyalty card or customer account data, you could find out what each of their customers tended to buy and when.

This could be used for sampling, survey weighting or statistical analysis.

Wealth

Other means could be used to estimate the average wealth of people within a defined area, such as house prices or local commercial amenities.

New age customer profiling gives you more granular data

A new age of customer profiling has dawned, enabling you to access much more granular info on individual customers and extrapolate this to gain greater marketing insights than ever before.

This has been spurred on by the exponential growth in use of digital devices. In fact, 90% of all data has been generated within the last two years.

Social media

65% of adults now use social media, compared to just 7% in 2005. Intelligent algorithms are now able to analyse social media posts and collate data on subjects as diverse as:

Likes/dislikes

Purchasing behaviour

Location

Political affiliation

Gender identification

If you know how to disseminate this information, it can add much-needed depth to your customer profiles, helping you understand their personal motivations, desires and aversions.

Internet of Things

The average household has seven digital devices. With the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), this looks set to rise to 40 devices per home.

IoT enables users to order products or services directly from an appliance, as well as countless other applications. Devices in this category can also be used to control facilities around the home, including:

Heating

Lighting

Access

Electronic devices

Using this data, you can find out when a person comes home from work, what they do when they get back and how their purchasing behaviour aligns with their schedule. This can then be used to decide when and how to market a product to an individual.

Geotagging

82% of data now has some form of geotag, enabling you to find out where people are when they make a search, post a photo or order a new product.

Customer profiling has moved from generic group assumptions to a true understanding of the individual consumer. But, all this data is worth nothing if it’s not properly interpreted.

When correctly analysed using advanced location intelligence software, you can find the ‘why’ behind the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘where’, and begin to use this data to make practical changes to your marketing practices.

Discover how Periscope® can help you extrapolate from your reams and reams of data to build customer profiles that deliver real insights.

Head-quartered in Central London, NEWGROVE develops and provides Location Intelligence solutions to Insight, Financial, Location Planning, Property and Marketing teams within industries including retail, leisure, gaming, financial, telecoms and pharmaceuticals. Our flagship product, Periscope®, enables companies with multiple outlets to visualise their customers and locations on a secure, corporate version of Google Maps to add context to their existing data. You can identify, predict and understand what is influencing your existing and future customers: information that gives you a competitive advantage.